This application is the national phase under 35 U.S.C. xc2xa7371 of PCT International Application No. PCT/Jp01/05285 which has an International filing date of Jun. 20, 2001, which designated the United States of America.
The present invention relates to a microwave oven, and more specifically to a microwave oven allowing easy setting of a cooking menu for which heating and cooking is desired.
In microwave ovens on the market, for example, information concerning a cooking menu for which heating and cooking can be automatically performed by the microwave ovens is stored in advance. More than 100 types of recipe names, for example, are registered in this menu, so that the operation for the user to find the desired recipe name in the menu is complicated and thus not user-friendly. Especially when elderly people specify a desired recipe name in the displayed menu, it is difficult to search the desired recipe name because the recipe names are displayed in small letters, resulting in unpractical performance.
A cooker in which a method of displaying selected recipe names is improved is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2-119809. Since this cooker continues to display a recipe name once selected, after completion of cooking according to the recipe, the user can know what dish is in the cooker by identifying the displayed recipe name. In the cooker, however, only the period during which a recipe name for cooking is displayed has been improved, and no improvement in the operation to select a recipe name is shown.
An object of the present invention is to provide a highly practical microwave oven.
A microwave oven in accordance with one aspect of the present invention includes a storing unit at which cooking information including heating control information corresponding to each of a plurality of dishes for heating and cooking the dishes is registered as a standard.
The microwave oven further includes: a display unit; a recipe name storing unit storing recipe names of one or more dishes selected from the plurality of dishes; an external operation unit having at least a read operation unit operated to read a desired recipe name from the recipe names in the recipe name storing unit, for display on the display unit, and a heating start operation unit operated to instruct start of a heating operation for cooking; a desired recipe name displaying unit displaying on the display unit the desired recipe name read from the recipe name storing unit in response to the read operation unit being operated; and a desired dish heating unit for starting the heating operation according to heating control information corresponding to the dish of the desired recipe name in response to the heating start operation unit being operated, when the desired recipe name is being displayed on the display unit by the desired recipe name displaying unit.
In accordance with the above-described microwave oven, when the read operation unit is operated, the desired recipe name is read from the recipe name storing unit and displayed on the display unit. Then, when the heating start operation unit is operated, the heating operation for heating and cooking is started according to the heating control information corresponding to the desired dish.
This results in the following features. Specifically, in the storing unit of the microwave oven, standard cooking information concerning the plurality of dishes would be registered to enable automatic heating and cooking of widely-ranging dishes for every user. In practice, however, the dishes that the user may cook are limited to some of them. In the microwave oven in accordance with the present invention, heating and cooking of the user""s favorite desired dish which is frequently heated and cooked is executed simply by reading the desired recipe name not from the storing unit but from the recipe name storing unit which stores a recipe name of a dish selected from the plurality of dishes in the storing unit and by instructing start of the heating operation. Therefore, as compared with selecting a desired dish from a large amount of cooking information in the storing unit for every user and executing heating and cooking, the operations from selecting and specifying a desired recipe name to starting heating and cooking of the corresponding dish are performed more easily, resulting in practical performance.
In the above-described microwave oven, the desired recipe name displaying unit displays the recipe name in larger letters on the display images. Therefore even elderly users could easily check if the displayed recipe name is the desired recipe name, resulting in practical performance.
In the above-described microwave oven, the cooking information further includes a recipe name corresponding to each of a plurality of standard registered dishes. Then, the microwave oven further includes a recipe name storing control unit reading a recipe name of a desired dish from the storing unit through the external operation unit and storing that name in the desired recipe name storing unit.
Therefore, the user can selectively read and store a desired recipe name, for example, a recipe name of his/her favorite dish frequently cooked, from the storing unit into the desired recipe name storing unit, by operating the external operation unit.
The above-described microwave oven further includes a recipe name deletion control unit deleting a recipe name selected through the external operation unit from the recipe name storing unit. Therefore, it is possible to selectively delete a recipe name stored in the recipe name storing unit as desired and then to store a recipe name of a new desired dish in a space area resulting from deletion by the recipe name storing control unit. In other words, a recipe name stored in the recipe name storing unit can be arbitrarily changed as desired by the user, resulting in practical performance.
In the above-described microwave oven, the desired recipe name displaying unit displays each desired recipe name using a corresponding dedicated image in the display unit. Therefore, a desired recipe name is displayed in a unique manner (unique in a display manner such as graphic size, color and the like) together with a message unique to that dish (a unique message such as a tip message in cooking and the like) on the corresponding dedicated image, so that the user can finish the desired dish more properly with reference to the display content on the dedicated image.
In the above-described microwave oven, the cooking information presents the content according to the servings of a corresponding dish, and corresponding servings are indicated using the recipe name. Therefore, when the finished servings vary for the same dish, storage into the recipe name storing unit, display by the desired recipe name displaying unit, and the like can be performed using a recipe name indicative of servings. Furthermore, heating and cooking can be performed in accordance with cooking information including heating control information corresponding to servings.
In the above-described microwave oven, the heating operation is started to heat and cook a prescribed dish in accordance with heating control information of the prescribed dish that is supplied from website information via a communication network. Therefore, the prescribed dish can be heated and cooked using the heating control information of the prescribed dish that is externally supplied through the communication network.